


Second-Hand

by slanciante



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:06:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slanciante/pseuds/slanciante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Smoking is hazardous to your health.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second-Hand

He hates it when Sherlock smokes. Hates the focus it gives him. Some people would see it as a relaxing effect, but Dr. John Watson knows better.

Sherlock Holmes doesn’t relax. His mind has two settings: “bored” and “stimulated”

John hates when he smokes. John smoked in the Army for about 3 full days, based on boredom and it being there and something to do that was different than being shot at or saving lives brilliantly, and then he quit. It wasn’t the crushing guilt of the simultaneous states of his existence as being a doctor and smoking that made him stop. John Watson had learned to live with his guilt after he failed to save the blonde infantryman with the shrapnel wounds in his belly, the ones that permeated his intestines in 5 places. At least as far as John could count, in the desert without much more medical equipment than his eyes. No, he stopped smoking because he just…didn’t like it.

And he doesn’t like it when Sherlock does it either. Not for the emotionally unsound reason that it reminds him of the war. Sherlock is not The War and anyone who thinks that should be shipped to Afghanistan and forced down into the mud until they know the difference.

Sherlock is John’s War. Separate. Private. Something to be fought, not won.

and Smoking is Not Allowed.

It’s not even the smell, not even the cigarette butts he used to find everywhere…those were oddly comforting, so characteristically Sherlock that he didn’t even get mad when he found them in his bathroom sink, in his shoes, in his unattended cup of tea. He minded the one time they caught Sherlock’s hair on fire, because he was trying to be cool, as usual (which he’ll never admit, John thinks with a wry smile) smoking while lying down on the couch and a bit of glowing ash got stuck in those dark curls. John had put it out before Sherlock even noticed, then cut out the burnt bits carefully, while Sherlock laid there. Thinking. Insufferably quiet, tapping his index fingers together under his chin. 

Smoking wasn’t allowed for all of these reasons, and it also wasn’t allowed because of any of them.

Smoking wasn’t allowed because whenever Sherlock smoked, or wore a patch, it was like strapping a laser sight onto a sniper’s rifle. Sure it’s a gun first, it’s a devastating weapon, it’s designed for battle…but it’s static. Still, it’s only a potential.

Strap a laser sight to a rifle and you have to point it at something. You have to put that little red dot onto something of living, breathing flesh…and if you’re very very strong, if you’re the man you think you are, you have to Not Shoot It. This is important. you have to Not Shoot It, but you have to think about everything that could possibly happen in every single scenario if you Did.

John knows what this is like. He’s been in The War, after all.

When the laser of nicotine is on Sherlock’s mind, he turns from Sherlock into something vaguely like Sherlock…at least, to the eye, he looks the same. Except for the small sigh he makes when he first exhales, the slight inward gasp when the nicotine first intoxicates his bloodstream, he’s silent. And that, thinks John, is the whole problem.

With the cigarettes, Sherlock lays on the couch in his own world, the Cigarette world, where eating doesn’t exist, sleeping doesn’t exist, and worst of all, John doesn’t exist. If the cigarettes and the lighter are within his reach, he’ll keep smoking them one at a time just to keep up the buzz, until they run out. John knows that if the pack is out, Sherlock will lay rigid for a split second of realization, holding the ignited lighter until it burns his thumb. He won’t make a sound.

Sherlock’s not the only one who’s used their flat as an observation lab.

Armed with this data, John formed a hypothesis. Sherlock was absolutely abysmal whenever he was on a case and the facts hadn’t settled in his brain yet, was absolutely mad with thinking, needed to focus on his brain and not Other Silly Things, like breathing for example. Needed the cigarettes. Or at least the feeling of cigarettes. 

John blew two smoke rings into the air, the signal that he was done. A slight shifting from the man opposite him, and John settled into his chair. He took the final drag, stubbed out the cigarette into the Buckingham’s ashtray, threw the butt in the ornate slipper on the floor by the fireplace, and waited.

And Sherlock Holmes fixed the laser sight on him.

If he had to ever put it in words, to put it on the blog (which he never would) it started in the eyes, those lovely cerulean eyes that never missed a thing. A slight change in the eyes first, and then the body followed, sliding from the leather chair, the silken robe fluttering out as Sherlock stood abruptly. John watched his nostrils flare twice in the one long stride it took Sherlock to reach him, and then once more in the second it took him to bend at the waist and attack John’s mouth with his own.

John closed his eyes, sighed. Yes. It wasn’t a kiss, never was, but it was wonderful. It was wonderful because it wasn’t a kiss actually, it was Sherlock taking John’s last lungful of cigarette smoke as his first, as his only. As sort of an offering, a holy communion. And Sherlock, Sherlock, who didn’t even have friends until John came along, did this without even so much as asking John. Intimate.

And then, as fast as he had moved, Sherlock was back in his leather armchair, his robe wrapped around him. He breathed once, audibly, and then began to fire sniper rounds.

“It’s the aunt. Don’t know how yet, still unraveling. Give me a second. Ah yes, she knew about the gambling. Obvious. It was her paper. Section on racing always gone by the time she got to it. She doesn’t gamble, didn’t notice at first, people never do when things don’t matter to them, but everything should matter. The money was his, she’s naturally fearful, didn’t take her coat off here, wouldn’t let him near her purse, probably carries it around the house with her, but the money was also the family’s, she was living off it, and he was wasting it, and she had cancer. She waited until just enough was left in the account and froze it, as executor she’d have the right. He was livid, owed some people money, couldn’t pay. They sent their men, he acted their rage on her, had a gun, met her in the alley walking home from church. Obviously. The gloves. She had a car, let me think she had taken it. No, she walked to church. She had worn comfortable shoes, flat ones. No woman of that height and of that fashion would wear flats to church unless she was walking. No, the murder wasn’t premeditated. But it wasn’t self defense. She had his bullets. She had found the gun. She had his bullets in her purse and loaded the chamber as he was lying…why was he lying down? Ah, she struck him with it, with her purse. Took his gun, loaded it, and put a bullet in his brain.”

Slumping in his chair, the detective ran a hand over his face, sighing. “Dull. I was hoping that one would at least get me out of the flat. Run downstairs and fetch her, John.”

And John Watson, lost in the hail of gunfire that was Sherlock Holmes, smiled, and started thinking of a new place to hide his package of cigarettes.


End file.
